Haha, even though Sphinx did not have nice words for me in his departure post, he is the person who edited the Throne of Blood cover for me by removing all the text and leaving it as the version that became my standard avatar. I didn't even ask him. All I asked is that if there was anyone on the board who could do it and while he was about to leave, he gave me that. It was very generous. I wasn't offended by what he said in this post because I rarely ever take anything personal here, but I was forever grateful for him going out of his way like that.

Btw, P, when did you shift to using the caps lock or do you use a ghost writer?

haha good theory and thanks for noticing but the truth is not so exciting.. the secret as to why sometimes i use caps in my posts is that.. whenever i do it means i'm posting from my phone! if i write normally without any caps it means i'm at a real computer. my phone just does the caps automatically so i let it stay. normally the tell-tale sign that someone is posting from their phone would be a small mobile icon at the top left of their post, but that is only when you are using the WAP version of the site which is totally crap! i hav a cool smartphone now so i just browse the desktop version of the site when i'm out and about and if weren't for the caps no one would know the difference. also those posts tend to be shorter.

i love this forum, i wish i was more into movies like i used to.being a movie fan takes a lot of time, a lot of time that i fight to produce and when i get it, it's a privilege. and i guess the older you are, the less you're willing to be forgiving about things that aren't doing anything to you. for example, i had to stop watching paper man today because the idea of jeff daniels having an imaginary friend and being a schizo writer looking for inspiration riding a chopper bike is unbearable now. it might've been great in 2002, but that quirkiness is very off putting now. i try to stay active, i keep a list of stuff that i want to see ( today i saw catfish and i'm still here, both were cool, i thought). but i don't know.... i think it's bad to only go see stuff that you already know you're going to like because there's something unhealthy in that idea, but i just can't go and see despicable me or dinner for schmucks , in the same way i just can't keep up with everything that exists in the criterion collection and all of that. i wish i had the time to know what's so good about john cassavetes, or to watch a fellini movie for once. the idea was once attractive, to know everything there is to know about film, watch all the movies, but then you see how little use it has , and how very few people manage to maintain their dignity and humanity in being a living film encyclopedia, and it sucks... you're welcome to recommend a starting point for both of those directors, tho!

i was looking in a magazine at all the stuff they played at the morelia film festival in mexico and all the stills of the movies look fantastic, like stories i want to see . it reminded me of how cool it was to look at magazines like cahiers du cinema when i was younger and stalked godard and was into the french wave. but man , there are more important things in life to me now, and i hate the person that halts his own life to be in favor of cinema, like a desease...i hate that arrogant person to whom it is a virtue to have seen all of robert altman's movies, obviously, but i also hate that person who won't be able to enjoy toy story because of how it validates guantanamo bay because in the end it's barbie and ken taking care of sunnyside. these people do exist, but luckily there's most of you, always saying the right joke about movies that are good, but not too good ,like that time Stefen suggested Clooney's character in up in the air should've gone by himself to his sister's wedding to hit on all the chicks, i stil laugh at that, and i wish more people were into movies that way... it's so boring to talk about movies in my normal life. no one cares about having an interesting opinion about any movie, or about anything. a little off topic, but i also don't like people who're into all of the TED talks but are the laziest ppl in the planet. grow the fuck up, you'll never be proactive if you're already not, and if you are, you don't need to be reminded of what you already know.what i find the most sad about people involved in film is that they think taste is a practical, beautiful thing that they somehow will find a use for, but that will never ever ever happen, because taste and conceptions of beauty and the cannon are ... i don't even think i need to finish that idea it's disgusting.

when i left the forum a few months ago i wanted my life to go a certain way, and i forced myself to work in a way i had never worked. it was a cute idea, and i recommend everyone to stay off the things you adore the most for a while like sleeping, drinking, eating, smoking and checking the internet every 5 minutes, to get some perspective. i know it sounds controversial and cavalier but now i know some things about myself that i didn't. i know, for example, that i could never work in a movie unless i was the person with all of the money and control, because otherwise i'm not strong enough to yell and people and get things the way i want them to. i have other means of working and i try to get good at those... i also know that i wouldn't like to be a writer, because honestly , who cares. i'm embarassed of how stupid and plain most of my problems and thoughts are , so instead of validating my problems and thinking of how to write a cool indie movie, i try to think on how to validate my own life, you know, through actual work that might translate into a better society, and with a little luck, i might be confident enough in the power of my own ideas that it will make sense to write something and share it with a few dozen people that might end up reading them!

i know a lot of the stuff i just wrote is very obvious to some people, and i also know this is not a fucking blog, but i just wanted to remind everyone here how important this site is in staying honest about a lot of things , keeping healthy about criticism and opinions, and liking movies for the right reasons

Look I don't mean to be a douche in any way in this post. And I don't mean to necessarily start and argument, but some things you say rub me off the wrong way. Know I don't have a clue how old you are or have give fuck about it, because I never understood age arguments. But here goes.

being a movie fan takes a lot of time, a lot of time that i fight to produce and when i get it, it's a privilege. and i guess the older you are, the less you're willing to be forgiving about things that aren't doing anything to you.

---

watch all the movies, but then you see how little use it has

---

what i find the most sad about people involved in film is that they think taste is a practical, beautiful thing that they somehow will find a use for, but that will never ever ever happen, because taste and conceptions of beauty and the cannon are ... i don't even think i need to finish that idea it's disgusting.

Everyone here knows I'm not the most devout movie fan. My point is not to tell you to watch every movie. It is rather your quest for "use" that is strange to me. It is a strange human notion, the "loss of time". Does it not go on whatever you do? According to some, it would seem that time is not lost when you produce. But what do you produce? What is the use of what you produce? What could you possibly do that is so important as to create time. If you ask me, I feel that I'm losing a lot more time when I'm working than when I'm contemplating the beauty of life.

We truly live in a world that has no respect for beauty. I long for Ancient Greece where it was all that mattered. I'm not dissing you Cron, because surely you can appreciate beauty, but you seem to find it trivial now. I want to assure you it is not. It is hard to find beautiful things in the modern world. What is considered beautiful today is often either nothing (modern paintings, modern literature) or so universal it becomes boring (current personality-less top-models for example.) Yet it is quite rare to hear people complain about it. It is because appreciating beauty demands time. People have no time anymore, because everything they do must be "productive". So all they do is work, go to work, come back from work, prepare lunch for work, think about work and sleep (dream about work).

Not to achieve greatness in their work, mind you. The modern working man is so futile, it is the saddest thing to think about. They work because in the braindead society we live in, productivity is the Mother Value. No one aims to make the most perfect table ever, or to achieve a new level of quality in their work. The aim is to make the most things in the less time. Never better, just more.

That is because we have been convinced that greatness, beauty, perfection is for fools. "We have no time for all of this, we must work!" Yeah, well go ahead and make your 60 hour work week. Get a promotion. Make money. Buy a second car. A bigger house. Or at least, that's what I hope for you. Chances are you don't even get that promotion anyway, haha.

I'll just sit here with my (future)children in my little bungalow, after my 35 hour work week. I'll read some Camus while my kid is painting and the other is playing piano. ***crossing fingers*** In the end, we'll die and it won't have mattered. All time was lost. But some more enjoyably.

-----sidenote: I find it interesting that often the left accuse the right of greed, yet it is most often that leftist are obsessed with work while rightist tend to be more interested in family. just a thought

yes, the "use" part definitely called my attention yesterday. watching movies is an end in and on itself. it doesn't have a "use". I can only speak for myself, but the reason at age 30 I still "make time" for movies is because I enjoy them, certainly more than working in anything that is not cinema related. I have a small amount of suffering for the films I haven't seen that I want to see because it's something I know would give me pleasure, food for the soul.

Going back to the work, to me watching some films (or rewatching them) is time better spent than working. And a lot of aspects of the filmmaking process (which is my personal ideal job) are not as enthralling as just simply seeing something great on dvd or blu ray or whatever. But as Pas says, is not only that. Having a hike in the mountains, traveling to some place new once a year at least, reading a book, sit somewhere and listen to a whole album, going somewhere and take 300 pictures...life is full of these pleasurable experiences that don't really "feed" professional development...but I've found that in the end, those are not only are those the things that make anything worthwhile but also the ones that help you the most on the professional, career wise side of life.

yes, the "use" part definitely called my attention yesterday. watching movies is an end in and on itself. it doesn't have a "use". I can only speak for myself, but the reason at age 30 I still "make time" for movies is because I enjoy them, certainly more than working in anything that is not cinema related. I have a small amount of suffering for the films I haven't seen that I want to see because it's something I know would give me pleasure, food for the soul.

Going back to the work, to me watching some films (or rewatching them) is time better spent than working. And a lot of aspects of the filmmaking process (which is my personal ideal job) are not as enthralling as just simply seeing something great on dvd or blu ray or whatever. But as Pas says, is not only that. Having a hike in the mountains, traveling to some place new once a year at least, reading a book, sit somewhere and listen to a whole album, going somewhere and take 300 pictures...life is full of these pleasurable experiences that don't really "feed" professional development...but I've found that in the end, those are not only are those the things that make anything worthwhile but also the ones that help you the most on the professional, career wise side of life.

Beautiful post my friend.

I hope I didn't come off as arrogant in mine, and if I did, blame it on the language barrier. Neil, I assume you were sarcastic with your "wow" (because the marque told me I would never be wrong if I did that) and I would like to know if I am wrong? I think Cron has provided us with meat for a truly valuable discussion about the importance of not only movies, but art and beauty in our lives.

I liked cron's post. I think it was the perfect post to highlight the 7 or 8 years that this board has been around.

Let's face it, a lot of us have grown up on this board. I know I don't speak for myself when I say I came here as a bright eyed teenager with my only dream being to work in movies in some capacity and where I'm at now, I'm in the latter end of my twenties and I've pretty much lost any interest I ever had in working in films. It wasn't that I failed. It's that life kind of took over and I don't have the time to put in to try and work on films. This board has pretty much been my one constant in the last 7 years. Other message boards have come and gone but this board has ALWAYS been there. Like cron, I had a long break at one point too when I felt I needed to work on stuff in my own life and stop spending so much time on the internet. When that break ended and I became a better person, I came back and xixax was still here and it was comforting.

I watched SO MANY movies from 2003-2006. At the time I had a disposable income and I was buying everything. I never had as good taste as most on this forum and my viewing was always of the more mainstream variety. Not blockbuster mainstream, but xixax mainstream. Stuff like Van Sant and Almodovar. Stuff that might be seen as eccentric in the real-world, but was mainstream here, but I was watching a lot of movies. I was watching them to talk about here because I liked this place. Sometime around 2006, I just got busy and I couldn't watch movies and couldn't keep up. So I stopped watching so many movies. I'd watch the mainstream (real-world mainstream, not xixax mainstream) blockbusters because it's all I had time for. I didn't need to know who directed what blockbuster, what their techniques are, who they are influenced by. I could just watch it and turn my brain the fuck off. After awhile, it's like all my interest for film was gone. This place was on life-support and with this place barely hanging on, I didn't even know where to start to get back into watching good films.

This is where I like cron's post. Sometimes keeping up with film is a full time job. It's almost as hard as keeping up with music (almost). It's easy to watch a movie. It's the easiest thing to do, but keeping up with whats going on is hard. Keeping up with what is good, what's bad is hard. Without this board, my tastes would be awful. They'd be terrible. I trust this board more than I trust anyone else including critics. When samsong says the best film he's seen this year is Certified Copy, I move it to the top of my list because I trust him. I trust everyone on this site because I've spent so much time here and I feel like I know everyone. I know everyone's tastes and likes. I've become friends with many xixaers offline, I've met many xixaxers offline. The amount of time I've spent on this site has made this more than a website for me; its made it almost a part of my life. Sounds corny, I know, but it's the truth.

I think the board is at a good place now. We have tons of success stories of posters on this site doing it big. When md and bluejaytwist post something they're working on, you gotta give a thumbs up because they're one of us. Same with Ravi, Gamblour, JG, Mac, I Love a Magician, pete, cbrad, etc, etc. They're doing big things. My only beef is that there doesn't seem to be a revolving door of posters here. There is never really any new blood. That scares me because at some point people will get bored of posting on a message board and without any new members, what happens to xixax?

I never took cron's post as an indictment on the site or on movie watching. To me it just illustrated what I and I'm sure many others here felt. We grew up. Life took over. We became adults. A lot of us have gotten married, had children, did time, got married again, bought a home, lost our hair, gained weight, changed political parties, etc, etc. We grew up. It happens. We may not watch films with the same bright-eyed teenager eyes, but we still watch them and we always will. And I can only speak for myself, but I like being a more mature movie watcher because I don't give a shit about what's hot or what I'm supposed to like. I just watch what I find interesting. Also I don't give a crap anymore about saying I didn't like something as much as I thought I would. That's something I probably would have felt different about 5 years ago. And I like my taste now. I watch what I find interesting and is appealing to me. It doesn't matter who made it, who stars in it, it just matters if it sounds interesting. Over the years I've come to terms with the fact that film really is subjective and it's okay to overrate or underrate a movie as you see fit.

Logged

Let's go to a motel. We don't have to do anything -- we could just swim.